The Ugly Duckling
by The Mome Raths Outgrabe
Summary: Tony gives Loki books to shut him up. Takes place during Avengers.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Avengers.**

 **Thanks to my beta** krystal lazuli **also I edited after so all errors are mine.**

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He had liked his other cage better. It had been clear and he had been able to see the reactions of the people he was trying to get a rise out of, rather than just speculating on whether or not the people that he was insulting could even hear him at all. Loki briefly thought back to his first cage, the one that he had tricked Thor into and the one that Thor had somehow escaped from without dying. How was it that Thor always managed to survive his attempts to kill him? Maybe it was because there was a part of him that didn't really want him dead? He didn't really want to think about that right now and brought himself back to present. Because he had jettisoned his first prison he was now left with this one.

One thing that was for certain was this his new prison was in the man of iron's tower. Another thing was that there were several objects, whose purposes were to record, pointing at him. Loki had not stopped talking since he had gotten into the small metal room, spewing forth insults that he had no way of even knowing whether or not they were heard. Loki did his best not to be silenced by hinting at things beyond the Avengers knowledge but he never actually said anything. Loki was not stupid enough to talk of Thanos and The Other directly. Loki smirked as he heard the door to his new prison open and the man of iron walk into the room.

"If I get you a book will you stop talking?" Loki's smirk grew, so they had heard his insults.

Loki's gaze raked over the Midgardian trying to figure out if the man was serious. It would be far more entertaining to hurt the others, but he was getting a little tired of constantly doing it. Books, books had always been his friend whenever he needed them. Surely even Midgardian books, even if he was sure they couldn't match up to Aesir standards, were worth something?

"Okay." Loki agreed, pretending for a moment that the man of iron was his servant and inclined his head regally. He could see a spark of irritation in the man's eyes, but he still left the room and came back with his hands full of books. Several of them had pictures on the covers and Loki had a strong feeling that they were children's book. Loki looked up from the books to glare at the Midgardian's eyes who in turn looked amused back into his.

"Well, I thought if you're going to have a temper tantrum than I should get you some age-appropriate reading material." Loki folded his arms tightly in response and glared at him. Tony put the books down next to him regardless and left the room. Loki, after a long moment of glaring at the stack of books decided that since, at the moment, there were no Avengers in the room, that he might as well look at them.

He picked a particularly bright one and flipped through it quickly. The illustrations were interesting, but the content was so far beneath him that he grimaced and then chucked the book into the hard metal wall of his temporary quarters. He picked up the next one, found it was even more moronic and he threw it next to the other book via the wall. This one hit the metal wall harder and there was a satisfying snapping sound which was most likely the spine of the book.

He normally didn't harm books, but these hardly qualified as such. He picked up another one the widest one of the bunch. If there was any hope of anything intelligible in this bunch of books, it was probably lied in this one. This one had more words per page than the first two. It still was far behind his level of intelligence, but even though the story was simple it drew him in.

The story was about a duckling. The duckling looked much different from the other ducklings which led the others to call him ugly. The poor duckling didn't fit in with the others of his kind. Loki couldn't help but parallel himself to the duck. His light skin and dark hair were so unlike anything else on Asgard, but were especially rare in his family. His skin was lighter than both his parents and his hair was darker than his father had been, even before it had started going gray. He also hadn't been as athletic as most Asgardians were. His preference for long distance weapons and tricks rather than hand to hand combat had set him apart from his peers as well. As the story went on he empathized more and more with the poor duckling who had to endure so much just because he had been born uglier and larger than the rest of his species.

As he was neared the end of the small story, with only a page or so left before the tale would be finished, he paused as his eyes took in the words. A swan? The ugly duckling had been a swan all along? He supposed he saw literary merit in such an ending, but he suddenly felt like he couldn't breath. He had related to the ugly duckling the whole story. Throughout all the duckling's hardships, he had felt a strong bond with the duckling -only to find out that it was not an ugly duckling at all, but a swan, a beautiful swan.

He felt the familiar pang of pain and anger rise up in him again. The ache that kept rising up no matter what he tried to do to make it go away. The had both been the ugly duckling, but he hadn't turned into a swan. He had turned into a Jotun. Monsters. Jotuns were monsters and he hated the duckling for turning into a swan when he had to be a Jotun.

He hated the story. He loathed it to the very depths of his soul. Loki took the book and threw it against the wall again and again, until the spine broken in several places. From there he used his hand to break the book in half and broke each segment in half again. Loki tore the pages into tiny little pieces until there was only a little mound of scraps of paper and bits of spine leftover from the book. If he had access to any kind of weapon he'd destroy it further. Fire. Fire would be the best to eliminate any kind of trace of the horrid book. Unfortunately, he didn't have fire and he had already destroyed as best as he could by hand, so he simply glowered at the mound.

Loki heard a throat being cleared and looked up to see the man of Iron staring between him and the little mound of paper.

"Not a fan?"

"Not particularly, no," Loki answered as stoically as he could when he was anything but, thankfully the man didn't press it further.

"Alrighty then." The man of iron said and he left the room once again.

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